The New Lancashire Constabulary Emergency Planning Team
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 introduced major changes in the way emergencies are planned for across England and Wales. In many ways the Act actually consolidated existing good practice that had been in place in Lancashire for many years overseen by the Lancashire Major Incident Coordinating Group or LANMIC.
To meet the requirements of the Act and to ensure we continue to deliver a first rate emergency planning service the Constabulary carried out an in depth review of emergency planning within the force in the lead up to the implementation of the Act.
The review, including recommendations of the Emergency Planning Manager, Brian Dillon led to three new posts being established to meet the demand created by the Act and to lay a foundation for continued improvement and development of the service into the future.
To ensure a consistent approach to emergency planning across the six Lancashire territorial divisions within the force, two emergency planning officers have been appointed with specific responsibility to deliver emergency planning services to those divisions.
Helen Robinson will work closely with Western, Central and Southern Divisions and Linzi Cookson will work with Northern, Eastern and Pennine Divisions. Both Helen and Linzi will become familiar faces within the divisions over the next few months. They will ensure that plans are fit for purpose, updated and reviewed. They will also carry out plan exercising and training for all staff at all levels and they will update the senior management teams on all emergency planning issues – a regular ‘health check’.
But their activity will not solely be related to the police. Colleagues within local government, fire and ambulance services, the wider health community and many others will come into direct contact with Helen and Linzi, who will support and represent the police at all types of events.
To support the corporate and central functions within G Division and Headquarters PC Jon Molloy, will act in support of emergency planning delivery and provide assistance to the manager. This will also increase our resilience in both the planning and response functions. Amongst many other responsibilities Jon, with his IT background, will be working to enhance and improve the effectiveness of our intranet site making emergency plans easier to access and easier to use.
The final member of the new team will be Diane Bentham. Diane has worked as administrative support to the manager for nearly 10 years. Diane will continue in that role acting as a vital support member of the team.
The Emergency Planning Manager, Brian Dillon, will be a familiar figure to many both within and outside the police service. Brian has been the emergency planning officer for Lancashire Constabulary since 1997 and held several secretarial positions nationally, regionally and locally. Currently he is the secretary to the Lancashire Resilience Forum and referring to the new team he said,” This is a time of major change in the emergency planning community. The Constabulary has responded well to the challenges presented by the new legislation and quickly recognised the need to resource the new work required to meet those challenges. I am confident that the new team will find the work exciting and rewarding, in particular when working closely with all our partners in providing a first rate service to our communities. Our aim will be to ensure we are as prepared as we can be to respond effectively to any event.”